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Karma Points and Ranks

Submitted by Jiyambi on Mon, 2010-06-28 00:00

Karma Points are a measure of a user's contribution to the WoW-Pro community. They are awarded for any action which helps enrich the community, including writing guides, leaving helpful comments, and working on the WoW-Pro Addon. You can also lose Karma Points if you do things that harm the community, such as leaving harmful comments or extremely inaccurate or harmful guides.

Ranks are awarded to users at certain Karma levels to allow them privileges on the website. Unlocked privileges include skipping the comment moderation queue, ability to revert bad revisions to wiki pages, and the ability to post news on the front page of the site. You can view the current highest ranking members by selecting the Rankings link at the top of each page.

I'll explain the different ranks and the methods for earning Karma below.

You can gain Karma points in three ways: comments, guides, and addon work. Comments and guides that actually detract from the site will result in a loss of Karma. Note that blatant trolling, flaming, or spam can still result in an immediate ban at the administrator's discretion

Comments:

Useful comment = +1 Karma

Very useful comment = +2 Karma

Bad comment = -1 Karma

Very bad comment = -2 Karma

Guides:

Okay Guide (two stars) = +2 Karma

Good Guide (three stars) = +4 Karma

Very good Guide (four stars) = +6 Karma

Awesome Guide (five stars) = +8 Karma

Bad guide (one star) = -1 Karma

Blogs:

Useful blog = +2 Karma

Very useful blog = +4 Karma

Bad blog = -1 Karma

Very bad blog = -2 Karma

Addon:

Test one guide = +2 Karma

Update/revise code for one guide = +4 Karma

Code one guide from the website = +6 Karma

Code one guide from scratch = varies, based on the quality of the guide(see "Guides" above)

Detailed bug report = +1 or 2 Karma (varies, like comments above)

Bug fix = +4 Karma

Minor feature addition = +6 Karma

Major feature addition = +8 Karma

I didn't include any penalties for addon work considering addon submissions will all be approved by me or Jame before they are released to the site. Also note that by one guide I mean the full guide, not just the part for a single zone. An example would be the full Jame's 21-31 guide, not just the 28 step section involving Stonetalon Mountains.

Please post a comment if anything here needs to be clarified or if you have any other questions.

You won't see guides by Silvann around the site, though he makes a habit of leaving helpful comments. Instead, Silvann's area of expertise is with addon coding, and he's done an awesome job of solving problems and developing awesome new features for the WoW-Pro addon.

I added a section for blogs and how points are calculated for them. Blogs are usually smaller than guides, so consequently I'm awarding fewer points. If someone's blog entry ends up as extensive as a full guide, I'll probably advise them to change it into a guide instead of a blog post, then award them guide points accordingly.

If you have questions or concerns about this change, please let me know!

Based on a discussion in the forums, I've made some edits to the permissions settings. Change 1 and 2 were done to limit spam, as we've been getting a lot of it lately.

1) Blogs are trusted member and above. I think this is okay - they can be an earned privilege.

2) Guides can be created and worked on by any authenticated user, but can only be freely published by Trusted Members and above. New members can leave a comment or send a PM to an admin to get their guide published.

3) Abandoned guides may now be edited by anyone. Previously the settings were no different from Finished. Only admins, moderators, and the author can change them back to Finished - so if the author comes back, he or she can change the guide back and regain control of it.

4) Exalted member permissions are now (hopefully) set correctly).

Please let me know if any of this is NOT working as outlined here, those settings menus are scary places and I could have made a mistake.

Skumball is well known for his fun and useful comments, his knowledge of warriors, and his general WoW Blog, Skumball's Junkbox. He has a few awesome upcoming Cataclysm guides planned which should be released shortly, including one covering the new secondary profession, Archeology.

wkjezz just released three excellent instance guides, covering the ICC five man heroic instances. He also released a 4.0 updated Holy Paladin guide, as well as guides on the conversion of emblems and honor to the new point system.

Haha well it's all good stuff so win
Should catch up soon though with guide numbers once I get all mine finished and released, next up... Archaeology!
Class guides are a pain in the rear-end to get done though, sooo much content to include!

Yeah, I am still struggling with the statistics weights of the new patch for my Paladin Guide. I feel like I am a seasoned pro at holy paladins, but right now everything is weird and we have no idea how the play style is going to change come 85 end game.

Currently, three users are all very close to becoming exalted members:

Skumball with 95 points

Silvann with 85 points

wkjezz with 82 points

These folks are working so hard to bring awesome content to the site and to the addon, I just want to make sure they know they are appreciated. Thanks for all your hard work!

If you're wondering what Silvann has done to be so awesome, other than leave helpful comments around here - He's been invaluable in his contributions to the WoW-Pro addon, including several fixes which I would never have been able to find on my own. I just wanted to make sure he was getting the recognition he deserved, since his contributions aren't as easy to trace as a guide.

I've had that e-mail too, I think it may be an automated one from the system.
No idea what's going on with it all but I have a feeling it's some bug from the auto admin system.
I'm sure whoever knows and has control though will be able to shed more light on this.

Sadly the Karma system is being really buggy lately, and the top users page hasn't correctly updated itself in ages. It doesn't look like you guys actually lost points, but your user status changed itself automatically. I corrected it manually.

Hopefully some of this can get looked into soon, sadly I don't really know anything about the guts of the karma system at the moment. I'll bug Jame about it some more but it may be that I'll just have to learn how to deal with it myself. Unfortunately I have no idea where to start, but that never stopped me before (example: addon development )